13 Family Adventures in Puerto Vallarta that are Educational and Fun
Puerto Vallarta is easily one of the most popular destinations in Mexico, and it’s easy to see why! Not only is the area filled with beautiful beaches and unique experiences, but its proximity to the States means it’s super easy to visit, as well.
But even though Puerto Vallarta is best known as a place for thrill-seeking or relaxing beach stays, it’s also a great place to visit if you’re interested in an educational field trip!
With scientist-led animal tours, beautiful natural surroundings, and cross-cultural experiences, Puerto Vallarta is a perfect place for finding educational family experiences.
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Whale Watching
Whale Watching Tour with a Biologist
Available Dec- June
via Viator (from $88)
Find and learn about humpback whales, dolphins, and other ocean life, and participate in a real-life research project!
If there’s one educational experience that Puerto Vallarta is known for, it’s whale watching!
Puerto Vallarta’s warm waters make it the perfect place for humpback whales looking for a place to spend the winter. Every year, around 2,000 whales call the area home, making them a common sight during the winter months.
It’s quite possible to see whales breaching from the shore, but if you want to maximize the educational potential and get up close, joining a whale-watching tour with a Marine Biologist on board is definitely the best choice.
Whales are only common in the area from December through March, so if you want to do whale-watching with your kids, be sure to visit during these winter months.
Swimming with Dolphins
Swimming with Free Wild Dolphins
Available all year
via Viator (from $88)
Half-day tour with a Biologist, with the possibility of swimming with dolphins
It’s impossible to visit Puerto Vallarta without seeing signs advertising the chance to swim with dolphins, but the vast majority of these are with companies that use captive animals in man-made pools. That way they can guarantee availability and control factors like water visibility.
However, studies have shown that living in captivity long-term can be harmful to dolphins, meaning that captive dolphin interaction tours aren’t a great way to get to see these beautiful animals. Luckily, there’s another option!
Wildlife Connection offers a boat tour off the coast of Puerto Vallarta that offers the chance to swim with wild dolphins, instead of keeping dolphins in tanks. Each tour has a focus on marine ecology and the guides are trained marine biologists. Plus, depending on the time of year, you might see other wildlife such as humpback whales, giant manta rays, sea turtles, or even orcas!
Proceeds from the tours go into continued research efforts working to help us better understand how to keep these magnificent animals safe.
Because they are dealing with wild dolphins, they can’t guarantee that you’ll be able to swim with them, but they do guarantee that you’ll be able to see them in the wild, making this tour a top pick for things to do with kids.
Baby Sea Turtle Releases
Turtle release on the beach
Availability varies
Via Facebook (Free, plus donations)
Learn about and release baby sea turtles alongside conservationists and researchers.
If you can’t tell, sea life experiences are easily some of the best things to do with kids while visiting Puerto Vallarta. And getting to release baby sea turtles into the sea was one of my kids’ favorites!
Sea turtles play an important role in ocean ecology, eating jellyfish and other invertebrates and keeping their populations in check, and the Puerto Vallarta area is an important hotspot for sea turtles to lay their eggs.
Campamento Tortuguero is a turtle egg rescue and release center located right on the beach at the Boca de Tomates in Puerto Vallarta. Because of the irregular hatching schedule of turtle eggs, you’ll need to follow them on Facebook so you can get notified about when the releases are going to happen. But it’s well worth the effort!
They have both Spanish-speaking and English-speaking volunteers at the camp, and my family found the presentations to be interesting and a lot of fun. They start off with an interesting talk about the turtles and their camp’s role in protecting them and finish the evening off by letting each guest release a turtle into the waves.
While the sea turtle release itself is free, they keep their operation running through donations and they will sometimes have a gift shop open where you can purchase turtle-themed trinkets to remember your trip, so be sure to bring some money along.
My family has been twice so far, and have found it to be a lot of fun both times.
Crocodile Sanctuary El Cora
Guided tour of local Crocodile Sanctuary
Available year-round
via Facebook ($12.50/adult 7.50/child under 13)
Learn about crocodiles and other local fauna with an experienced conservationist guide.
Sea turtles are pretty amazing reptiles, but they aren’t the only reptiles to be found in the area. If you’re looking for an unusual way to spend a day with kids in Puerto Vallarta, why not try a visit to the swamp?
El Cora Crocodile Sanctuary in Nuevo Vallarta is run by a group of local conservationists and marine biologists focusing on the area’s mangrove swamps, especially crocodiles! They offer both self-guided and group tours where you get to see a number of these fearsome creatures, but with a reminder that they are a natural part of the local ecosystem and have a role to play in their environment.
El Cora’s conservation and rehabilitation programs are fully funded by the proceeds from these tours, and they regularly release rehabilitated animals back into the wild.
A swamp tour isn’t typically what people think about when taking a trip to Puerto Vallarta, but the mangrove swamps play an important role in preventing erosion and keeping the beaches beautiful for tourists, and the tour is a lot of fun!
Los Arcos National Marine Park
Los Arcos Marine Park with Paddle Zone
Available year-round
via Google Maps (1200MXN/person)
A 3 hours-long tour of Los Arcos, including paddling through the island’s tunnels and spending time snorkeling above a coral reef.
While there are a number of great places to snorkel in the area, most of the best spots are in the areas that are a little bit off the beaten path. Los Arcos National Marine Park is one such spot.
Located about a 20-minute drive from the Romantic Zone in Puerto Vallarta, Los Arcos is a collection of small stone islands with some of the best snorkeling around. In large part, that’s because of its status as a National Marine Park which limits how much fishing can be done in the area and gives sea animals in the area the protection they need to thrive!
During our time there, we saw tons of tropical fish, baby pelicans, and even some manta rays jumping from the water.
Getting there can be a bit tricky on your own, so I highly recommend visiting with one of the many tour providers in the area. My family went on a kayak tour with Paddle Zone located on Mismaloya beach and had an absolute blast!
I also recommend going earlier in the day, since Los Arcos is a popular spot to visit. It got pretty crowded during the early afternoon, but because we arrived early, we had most of the morning almost to ourselves.
Beach Trip
Trip to Hidden Beach on Las Islas Marietas
Available year-round
Playa los Camarones (free)
Playa Nuevo Vallarta (free – link is to public access point)
Puerto Vallarta is first and foremost a beach destination, so I would be remiss to not mention the area’s great beaches as being some of the best things to do in Puerto Vallarta with kids!
Finding a beach to visit in the area is easy, as there are tons of small beaches to visit all along the coast. Most of them are free to enter, though it’s worth it to rent an umbrella for the day.
Surfing
Surf Lessons in Sayulita with Lunazul Surf School
Available year-round
Via Google ($45-$65/person + cab fare)
Surf lessons are available at most beaches, for around $100 a person, but for our family of 4, Lunazul cost $200 total + about $50 cab fare to get there. Plus it’s a great location!
Speaking of waves, the Puerto Vallarta area is also the perfect area to try out learning to surf!
Historically, my family hasn’t done much surfing, so we’ve really loved how easy it is to sign up for surf lessons. We used Lunazul Surf School in Sayulita for our lessons and really enjoyed how attentive the teachers there were with our kids. (Ask for Ramiro)
While there are definitely surf schools closer to Puerto Vallarta, we found it to be less expensive to travel north to Sayulita. Plus we’ve really enjoyed checking out the town while we were there!
Ziplining Canopy Tour
Ziplining with Canopy El Eden
Available year-round
via Google ($80/person on the website)
It’s best to contact them directly via WhatsApp or Messenger to ask about discounts before booking. We received a great discount just by asking!
Also be sure to bring cash for lunch, as the restaurant there does not accept credit cards.
If you aren’t familiar with ziplining, it’s essentially strapping yourself into a harness suspended from a metal cable hung between two high-up points, and then launching yourself across the gap. It’s fast, thrilling, and fear-inducing (but perfectly safe). So, why is it on this list of educational things to do with your kids?
Granted, ziplining isn’t inherently educational, but especially with older kids, it can be a super fun way to talk about physics concepts like potential energy, gravity, friction, and more! As an added bonus, the Canopy Tour we used, Canopy El Eden, is in a beautiful jungle location that also happens to be the site where Arnold Schwarznegger filmed Predator in the 80s!
Vallarta Botanical Gardens
Botanical Gardens located outside Puerto Vallarta
Available year-round
via Google (200MXN/person; 4 and under are free)
The gardens are a bit outside of Puerto Vallarta, but the variety of plants and walking trails makes the trip well worth the travel!
While many of the most popular things to do in Puerto Vallarta focus on the area’s proximity to the ocean, the Botanical Gardens decided to look inland.
Located roughly 40 minutes south of Puerto Vallarta, the gardens are located in the foothills of the Sierra Madres mountains and display a gorgeous variety of plants from all around Mexico. They are particularly proud of their orchid collection.
The Botanical Garden’s 79 acres are filled with beautiful native plants, a variety of easy hiking trails, and the Hacienda de Oro restaurant overlooking one of the garden’s rivers.
Choco Museo
Chocolate Museum and Workshops
Available year-round
via Tripadvisor (Free Museum; Workshops starting at $50)
Choco Museo offers a variety of chocolate workshops, a free museum, and a gift shop filled with chocolate.
My family had the opportunity to visit the Antigua branch of the Choco Museo during our trip to Guatemala, and loved the whole experience!
Puerto Vallarta’s Choco Museo is equally a great opportunity, with a variety of chocolate workshops where you get to make your own candies or a spicy mole sauce! But even if you decide to skip the workshops, it’s still worth a visit.
Choco Museo has a free chocolate museum that explains the origins of everyone’s favorite treat, from bean to bar, as well as a gift shop where you can sample their wide variety of chocolate products.
Cooking Lessons
Market Trip and Cooking Lesson with a Local Host
Available year-round
via Trip Advisor (Prices vary)
If you’re doing classes with Traveling Spoon, it can be worth it to click through to their website from Tripadvisor. Prices vary significantly between the two websites, so be sure to check both.
I’m a strong believer that if you want to learn about a culture, you should take a close look at their food. Which is why my family tries to get cooking lessons in every place we visit!
Mexican cuisine is one of the most-loved genres of food across the entire globe, so it’s pretty hard to go wrong with getting a cooking class in Mexico. If your kids are up for it, I highly recommend finding a cooking class that combines the lesson with a trip to the market to find fresh ingredients.
Not only is it a ton of fun to visit the markets where local chefs go to find the best meats and produce, but buying your ingredients fresh means you’re in for a treat when it comes time to eat!
Traveling Spoon has a variety of great classes that are perfect!
Pirate Ship Vallarta
Meals, games, and a beach day on a pirate-themed cruise
Available year-round
via Google ($130/adult; 117/child)
Yes, it’s expensive, but they often run great deals that can cut the cost significantly. Meals, sailing, a pirate-themed show, and a relaxing day on a private island are all included, which adds some real value to the trip.
If you’ve spent any time at all in Puerto Vallarta, you’ve seen or at least heard of their famous pirate ship!
The ship itself is a replica of Christopher Columbus’s Santa Maria from his 1492 voyage, though it has its own intriguing history, including voyages to over 87 ports around the world!
The Real-Life History of Puerto Vallarta’s Famed Pirate Ship
Today it mostly just serves as Vallarta’s Pirate Ship, taking daily cruises to the nearby Majahuitas Island where families can do anything from relaxing on the sand to kayaking around the island! During the cruise itself, families are treated to a pirate-themed skit that’s sure to please everyone.
The daytime cruise is better for kids and includes a full breakfast and lunch, a treasure hunt, contests with prizes, and more!
The Malecón
Explore the most popular boardwalk in Puerto Vallarta
Available year-round
via Google (Free activity)
Walking down the Malecón is a quintessential experience in Puerto Vallarta. Street performers and a variety of shops and restaurants mean every trip is different, but they are all worth the visit.
Taking a stroll down the boardwalk is a staple beach town activity throughout the world, and Puerto Vallarta is no different. Malecón is the Spanish word for “boardwalk,” and Puerto Vallarta’s malecón is one of the most popular attractions in town.
The Malecón is located in downtown Puerto Vallarta, making it an excellent place to begin exploring the city. Not only does it have amazing views of the ocean front, but the boardwalk itself is filled with interesting sights to see.
Statues and mosaics line the boardwalk, guaranteeing interesting things to look at, while street performers and artists do their best to catch your attention. Farmer’s markets and shopping stalls are common sights, especially on the weekends, and plenty of amazing restaurants offer shade or air conditioning if you find yourself in need of a rest and a bite to eat.
Though it is best known for its expansive beaches, Puerto Vallarta has a bit of something for everyone. Whether it’s discovering dolphins and watching whales or diving into a new culinary challenge, there’s something to learn during your next trip to the area.
